I will admit, my first instinct when writing about Oceana’s latest press release was to crack wise about how Kate Mara knows the dangers of drift gillnets because a frightening experience with an entanglement led to her tragic haircut.
Actress Kate Mara has attached her name to Oceana's latest misinformed and misguided campaign. Oceana photoBut that ’do wasn’t the first thing I noticed in the email. I skimmed right past the celebrity eye candy and noticed that the release contains numerous errors, as most of us have come to expect from Oceana.
It’s interesting to me that a group can spend so much time courting celebrities to be the face of their cause and not even bother to google whether it’s legal to use gillnets in Washington and Oregon.* They say, “Washington State prohibits drift gillnets and Oregon does not allow fishermen in the state to use them.” (You can also watch Mara's video on YouTube.)
For more on the drift gillnet fisheries in these states, check out our Cover Story excerpt “Up and down in Puget Sound” by Matt Marinkovich, who gillnets for chum — or keta — salmon in Washington. See also the Yearbook section in our April 2013 issue. Columbia River (Oregon) gillnetter Larry Telen graces the cover.
While it’s true that Oregon’s former Gov. John Kitzhaber (who resigned amid scandal recently) made an effort to restrict gillnets on the Columbia River, his alternative of allowing commercial seining isn’t panning out quite as planned.
The reason being that gillnets can indeed be a highly selective gear type if used properly (the right size mesh, appropriate length and depth of the net, timing of the fishery, and even adding lights or pingers to the nets to deter bycatch).
What I have learned from reading Oceana’s marketing materials is that there’s almost always a better solution to the problems they claim to want to resolve.
Just today I read a great story about Massachusetts’ South Shore lobstermen solving their own whale entanglement woes with more than 1,000 personal hours of research and development. Ask a fisherman to help you solve a problem, and in most cases, you’ll get a pretty useful solution that saves jobs, reduces bycatch and keeps fresh fish on your plate.
National Fisherman has long celebrated fishermen who devote their own free time to these kinds of projects. Their friendly faces and calloused hands carry considerably more substance than a celebrity with a glamour shot and an empty cause.
*For the record, I googled Ms. Mara. I recognized her from "Brokeback Mountain," but I haven't had the opportunity to binge on the Netflix series "House of Cards." Suffice it to say her IMDB entry is far more impressive than her ability to choose a cause.
